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Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Parlez-vous francais?

I have been warned by many people that all the second languages are stored in the same part of the brain. As I learn Hebrew my French will not only reimerge but be better than I ever thought it was. Today in Ulpan I had one of those moments.

We have been practising conjigating a new verb. We were given a handout. It had a list of the verb conjigated. The excerices had sentences in a question and answer format. Based on the question we had to fill in the blank on the answer with the proper pronoun and conjogation.

As I looked at the list my first reaction was why were there 10 pronouns instead of 8. French does not distinguish between masculine and femine for you (tu, vous). I was able to complete the assignment in 2 minutes. Most of the class struggled to identify the correct pronouns, never mind difficulty conjugating. I guess sticking with French through grade 10 had some benefits.

There are 3 Ulpan classes. The other two were dismissed at 11:00 because it was Tuesday. Our class continued on. Around noon someone who leaves early to go to their job came back to class. The doors to the upstairs classrooms had been locked and we couldn't get out. We sent our Shirut Liymi girl to fix the problem. A short time later she came back and the techer started making phone calls. A janitor unlocked the doors and the class carried on. At 12:30 the teacher phone rings. She then decides to dismiss the class 15 minutes early. She has gotten in trouble before for not strictly sticking to the schedule. I wonder if we will dismissed earlier next Tuesday.